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Books by Lee
Meitzen Grue
Goodbye Silver, Silver Cloud / In the Sweet Balance of the
Flesh / French Quarter Poems
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Three Poets in New Orleans
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Live! on Frenchmen Street
CD by Lee Meitzen
Grue
Musicians:
Eluard Burt II:
Flute, keyboard; Roger Poche: Bass
Lee Grue writes about New Orleans street life: Her
poems and stories are the essence of live music.
She and flute player Eluard Burt first met and
performed together at a place called The Quorum Club on Esplanade Avenue
during the sixties. Over the years they lost contact. Recently, they met
again and began performing together as The New Orleans Jazz and Poetry
Ensemble.
The Second Line
What? Who? Is the second line. It's not the corpse in
the casket. It's not the band of sweating musicians who follow the
casket playing their souls out in the August heat. It is the people who
follow the parade, dancing. We can't keep still, sometimes we arrive in
church too early, one of us laying his hat on his stiff left arm begins
to move up the aisle to the music, but someone comes and gently says:
"Brother, the second line is forming outside."
These poems are second lines. They are about live
performance. I was there when the musician felt a certain way and it
came out of the horn. I was there when my own life could not be
delivered by anything but music. A live performance is a one time thing
thing. Special to everyone in the room. Sometimes it is not the best
performance, but it is unique. Never will there be quite this mix of
people, place, and music ever again.
In Louisiana babies don't always get left at home, we
were taken along, and when the musician set ups set up the drums in the
empty dance hall, I was there for the first beat: Ever after, I'm in the
second line.
| Table of Contents
1. Ade's World: Cafe Brasil (3:30)
2. Allan (3:45)
3. Ann's Bar (2:47)
4. Babe Stovall (3:35)
5. Bread (3:50)
6. Dear Pilgrim (4:44)
7. Fats Domino at the Blue Room of the Roosevelt
Hotel (2:36)
8. The Fire Eater (1:51)
9. The French Market (4:04) 10.
Girls in a Bar on St. Louis Street (3:00) 11.
Hey, Jimmy (4:57) 12. Terminal (1:08) 13.
Mardi Gras (3:26) 14. Coming Out a
Midnight (2:15) 15. Miles (2:43) 16.
The Sleep Woman (3:34) 17. Sunk in Funk
(3:05) |
In 2000,
Eluard A. Burt
collaborated with
Lee Meitzen Grue to produce
Live! On Frenchmen Street
New Orleans music and street life as seen and lived by
spoken word artist, with jazz background. Poet Lee
Meitzen Grue and flute player Eluard Burt were part of
The Quorum Club, the legendary coffee house on edge of
the French Quarter during the sixties. They began doing
jazz and poetry together at that time.
During the last few years they've resumed their
collaboration with the help of Kichea Burt who
engineered the sound on this CD.
They've performed at Cafe Brasil and other New Orleans
clubs and in New York at The Knitting Factory.Grue, who
also writes books, has appeared on the college circuit
in the U.S. and internationally. She consider these
poems "second lines": Homage to the musicians she
follows.
There's an interview with Lee Grue in the (Winter 2001)
issue of "Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz and
Literature." Check it out. Photos, interview, and four
pages of poetry. An overview of the jazz and poetry
scene in New Orleans.
To Listen:
http://cdbaby.com/cd/grue
also
http://hearingvoices.com/story.php?fID=153 |
